NAIDOC Week 2025: Celebrating culture at St Mary’s

POSTED July 29 2025 , Junior School, News, Parents & Community

Our 2025 NAIDOC Week celebrations were a vibrant and engaging schedule of activities, centred around this year’s powerful theme: The Next Generation: Strength, Vision and Legacy. Across four enriching days, students, staff and families came together to learn, share and honour Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures.

Connection to culture in the edible garden

The Year 4 Edible Garden session, led by our Years 9 and 10 students, focused on native plants and bush tucker. As part of the activity, the girls painted wooden posts to represent the Indigenous seasons, which were then placed in the garden. The older girls brought native plants, which the Year 4s planted later in the week as they explored what thrives in each season. This hands-on experience gave younger students a meaningful and engaging introduction to sustainable Indigenous traditions.

A Year 4 student with a red hand, ready to place a handprint on the wooden post

A Year 4 student placing a handprint on a wooden post

Yarning

Our Years 1 and 2 students loved settling in for reading and yarning sessions and exploring Dreamtime stories. Earlier in the day, our Indigenous students from Years 7 and 8 brought big smiles to the faces of our Pre-primary and Kindergarten girls with a fun and colourful face and hand-painting session.

Junior School students sitting on the floor, actively engaged in the Dreamtime story being read to them by Senior School students

A Junior School student delighted to be having her face painted by one of the older students

Spectacular sand mural creation

Our Senior School Indigenous students came together to create a stunning sand mural, telling the story of this year’s NAIDOC theme: The Next Generation: Strength, Vision and Legacy. At the heart of the design is a turtle, a meaningful symbol honouring Indigenous Elders, surrounded by symbols of strength (spears), vision (an eye), and the path forward (a footprint). With the design led by our Year 12 Indigenous students, this hands-on activity saw the girls working with remarkable dedication through wind and rain to create the striking art piece.

The students proudly standing around the completed sand mural.

The girls working in the wind and rain to create this year's sand mural

A close up of one part of the sand mural featuring a yellow sand path with black footprints, bordered by white sand, surrounded by green grass and areas of red and brown mulch

Cooking and community

Multiple cooking sessions were held at Anne Symington House, promoting the sharing of food and stories, a vital part of Indigenous culture. Girls came together with their families to make damper, traditionally baked fish and cracked open boab nuts, sharing the fruit inside. These moments created a warm sense of community and shared experience.

Jaja Valerie, the grandmother of one of our Year 8 students, leading the girls in a damper-making session.

A Moving NAIDOC Assembly

The week’s centrepiece was the NAIDOC Assembly, where the school gathered around the sand mural to reflect on the strength and leadership of First Nations people. The program included student-led presentations, as well as music and dance performances from both our girls and Indigenous students from the Scotch College Clontarf Academy. In a heartwarming moment, the younger brother of one of our Year 8 students, who had journeyed from Broome with his family to celebrate NAIDOC Week, was beaming with pride as he was invited to dance alongside the Scotch boys. His involvement was a beautiful reflection of the strong family ties and shared spirit that NAIDOC Week honours.

Our Indigenous students taking part in a traditional dance during our NAIDOC Assembly

NAIDOC Week 2025 at St Mary’s was a meaningful celebration of culture and community. Through art, stories, food and learning, students across all year groups embraced the spirit of this year’s theme and created memories that will shape their understanding of reconciliation and respect for years to come.

For more information on our Indigenous Program, please click here.